‘I’ll Blow Your Head Off!’: GunToting White Man Caught on Video Assaulting and Threatening Black Woman at Indianapolis Gas Station, Hurling Racist Slurs
Jan 27, 2025
He had already pointed a gun at her head, threatening to shoot. Now Mark White, 59, escalated the tension even more at a northeast Indianapolis gas station Tuesday night, grabbing 21-year-old Tashauna Gooch and shoving her against the side of her car, peppering her with racist taunts and threats of violence.
“I will kill you,” Gooch quotes White as saying. But even when free, albeit at gunpoint, she resists bystanders’ pleas to leave.
“I felt like if he wanted to shoot me, he would have just shot me,” Gooch told the Indy Star Wednesday, one day after the showdown with White.
A video screenshot shows Mark White roughly up a Black woman and putting a gun to her head. (Photos: Facebook video screenshot/Kevin Anthony)
And what if he followed her? If the situation had escalated, she wanted witnesses.
Gooch had been armed, but after initially retrieving it when first engaging with White, after he had honked his horn at her several times while she pumped gas into her 2017 Chevy Impala, she dropped it back inside her vehicle.
“I have too much to live for and I’m not going to shoot somebody for calling me the N-word,” Gooch said. “He went to jail and that was what was supposed to happen. I’m just happy we’re both still here.”
“I didn’t want to have to shoot him ’cause, I mean, look at him. He’s an old man,” she said.
White, from Hickory, North Carolina, was arrested and taken to an Indianapolis jail, charged with intimidation with a deadly weapon, battery with a deadly weapon, where he was charged with criminal recklessness, strangulation and battery in connection with the incident.
There’s little debate as to what transpired in the video, shot and posted by Facebook user Kevin Edwards.
“She didn’t do anything to show signs of aggression, so he definitely took it to the extreme,” Edwards said in an interview with FOX59/CBS4.
“That was completely unnecessary to pull a firearm,” he said.
It all started, Gooch told police, at a disabled gas pump, where she was dealing with a malfunctioning pump. After White honked his horn at her, she moved her car, got out of the vehicle and an argument ensued.
“I was sitting at the pump that wasn’t even working and he pulled up telling me to move all aggressive,” Gooch told IndyStar. “I asked him what his problem was and he started calling me all types of N-words and threatening me … Basically, I was at the pump too long for him.”
White initially claimed Gooch pulled a gun on him, though he later changed his story. Gooch denied she ever pointed her gun at White, saying it remained in her pocket until she placed it back into her car. Witnesses confirmed as much, according to a probable cause affidavit.
Officers arrived on the scene, and Gooch and White were arguing near the gas pumps. White had his Smith and Wesson handgun in his right hand and was ordered to drop the weapon, which he did in the back of his truck.
White told police after Gooch approached his car, he produced his gun and walked her back towards her vehicle, threatening to “blow her head off,” according to court documents.
Officers observed marks on her neck and a scratch on the back of her head, which she said were caused by several strikes from White’s Smith and Wesson, the affidavit states.
Gooch said she believes her attacker was motivated by racism.
“I (could) hear the hate in his voice,” she said.
Josh Riddick with the Indiana Black Church Coalition told the Indy Star what happened to Gooch is likely a preview of things to come, noting the recent cancellation of government diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, the pardoning of the Jan. 6 insurrectionists, and the controversial, Nazi-reminiscent salute are signs of bigotry being normalized.
“There’s a deep history of racism in Indiana with housing the KKK and that history isn’t that distant,” Riddick told the paper. “Those people are still here, and when you have legislators and leaders both national and local using some of the language that they do, it influences people willing to cause everyday physical harm to minority groups.”
‘I’ll Blow Your Head Off!’: Gun-Toting White Man Caught on Video Assaulting and Threatening Black Woman at Indianapolis Gas Station, Hurling Racist Slurs
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